 reviewing the US and the Holocaust. And this is a movie on PBS. It was shown on PBS Hawaii a few weeks ago. Now it's all over the place. And you can watch it on YouTube. You can watch it free on YouTube. There are three episodes to it. And it is the movie that will leave an impression on you probably for the rest of your life. So today on Movies You Can Learn From, we're going to review that movie and we're going to try to put it in perspective with George Kasin and me. George, welcome to the show. Before we started, you were talking about your own reaction to this movie. And I like you to give that reaction now. It's a chakaroo. Why? Because everything I learned in high school and in college, this movie filled in gaps that said brought us to the light things I never knew. And what's uncanny is my high school teacher Susan Menzer, she had gone, she was a graduate from Brandeis and George Spiro, another person who should have been aware of this and they only glossed over this in our history courses. This Ken Burns documentary is so comprehensive and so shocking and brings in details that I never knew. And I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about that period in Europe and America. And the other thing is we never learned how America really turned their face away from all these European Jews that are the problems and because of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which closed immigration. But you know what came to my mind just recently? These European Jews could have quote unquote temporarily been moved here or you know to America or somewhere to save them until the war effort was over and then potentially have them return to their homes. But none of that was done. I mean they just, our country until the Japanese until the Japanese did Pearl Harbor in 1941, we were really and there was so much anti-semitic anti-semitism and anti-immigrant feelings in this country in the in the hinterland, right? People just left to die. The St. Louis that came went to Cuba first, the boat and then came to America. They wouldn't let them in here. They wouldn't let them in Cuba and they went back to Europe and about a third of those, some of them went to Holland and wherever other France, but about a third of them eventually died in the in the gas chambers or other other means because they were in countries that the Nazis had taken over. So bottom line here for me is learn things I never knew. Me too. You know and I kept thinking throughout the movie that you know I've been watching the public public information and documentaries about World War II for my whole life. I remember when I was a kid in the 50s watching Victory at Sea, black and white movies taken by the Navy in the Pacific and some to some extent in the Atlantic and seeing all these movies for all of our lives about what was going on in Europe and Germany, especially some of them were documentary, some of them were art. I guess you could say that entertainment, but it was all about the Nazis and and how bad the Nazis were and this and that and a lot of movies including Spielberg's movie about Schindler's List. Great movies. Our lives have been filled with an examination of what happened in Europe and what happened in the Holocaust, what happened to the Jews. I mean it's extraordinary to find people deny the Holocaust when we have all been surrounded with this with information about the Holocaust for really all of our lives, but there are people out there who really don't know about it for some reason. They never studied at all in school. They never saw any of these documentaries or or movies about what happened in Europe. This movie, this series changes that for you. The series has as footage that you have never ever seen before. I mean I think of how old I am and I have never seen this footage. I wonder what's going on here. Why did I not see this footage before? Why did it take all these years for somebody to show me this footage? It is extraordinary and you wonder where it's been hiding and you wonder where Ken Burns found it. But you know his treatment of the Holocaust is really shocking to the tips of your toes about just exactly how mean Hitler was. There's not enough time in this program actually, George, for us to examine all the incredible things that Hitler was doing. And I have to say it's not just Hitler because people went along with him. The real extraordinary point here is that the country of Germany and other countries that he took during the war went along with him. They let it happen and sometimes actively participated, sometimes passively participated, but in their midst six million people, most of them Jews, were murdered. Why? I mean you know we all know Jewish people. There's no reason at all to have anti-Semitism. It never was and somehow our Western society has incorporated this into our history for no damn reason all these years. And I have to say the church has encouraged it and used it as a piece of propaganda for the last couple thousand years. And here we are with the 20th century with loaded with it and we're in the 21st century and we're still loaded with it. What insanity is going on here? So I guess the question I would put to you is what about the United States? That was the real revelation here in these three series, these three episodes in the series about Ken Burns's movie and he was really totally candid about the United States. Somewhere along the line there's really dark, dark phenomenon of anti-Semitism caught in the United States, in U.S. government, in the hinterland, in the cities, in corporate America and it was really bloody awful what was happening by the time we get to the 30s and the 40s. I believe it also existed, tangibly existed in the 20s. It was part of American racism. Yeah, American exceptionalism includes American exceptional racism, racism against the African Americans, racism against all minority groups and now we see through this film that the level, the intensity, the madness of racism against the Jews in this country, a country where we, you know, it doesn't a day go by everybody says all of great country and we're tolerant and we take care of each other and hey wait a minute you got to see this movie. If you haven't seen this movie your education is completely incomplete. So here we have pretty much three parts about how this evolved in the United States in the early 30s, the late 30s and in the 40s and exactly what was going on, vis-à-vis what was what was going on in Europe. Even the media, you know, millions of people are murdered savagely, incredibly murdered and it's on page six of the newspaper. Page six. Page six. Yeah, I mean, did we not think that was important? Do we not think that was remarkable? And we had people in the State Department that could not give a rip that there were people dying by the millions in Europe. They did nothing, really nothing, to allow them visas, to allow them sanctuary in the United States. All under the beacon of the Statue of Liberty, give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free and the State Department was actively, actively causing them to die. There was no excuse for it and FDR, although he was in many ways the guy who saved the country, fact is that he didn't feel politically, he didn't feel that he was in the right place politically and he could do much about it. And had the war not started 1941-42, first was Pearl Harbor, as you mentioned, but also 42, both Germany and Italy declared war in the US and now things changed. But until that time, and this movie goes into it in great depth, until that time, people were sympathetic to the Germans, they were sympathetic to Hitler, and they were anti-Semitic by the millions in this country. So, and then you mentioned, of course, Rachel Maddow series, which just started last week, called Ultra, where she digs into this same subject matter and it's more, it's more of what Ken Burns was doing. And she gives you well-researched podcasts, three of them so far, but there'll be more, every week there'll be another one, revealing her research about how these groups wanted to overthrow the United States government through the 30s and into the 40s with munitions, with machine guns and the like, that they had stolen from armories, military armories here, how they established groups in a number of cities in New York, in Boston, was one in a Midwest city and in Los Angeles, where people came for miles around to join them and use these stolen weapons, stolen munitions with a plan, a conspiratorial plan, such as, as you said, January 6th, to actually kill members of Congress in the capital, take over the government and install a Nazi leader in government in this country, all through the 30s. And I didn't study this in school, I never heard of it before, never heard of it before. I'm sure we know about Father Coughlin and we know about Charles Lindberg and others who were visibly, and Henry Ford, visibly anti-Semitic and visibly sympathetic to the Nazis, but we didn't know how much money they put into it, how many people came around and followed them and how advanced their plans were to, you know, he overthrew the government. It was close, man, it was close in the 30s and the war and FDR coming into the war essentially saved the country. He wished he could have done it earlier and or in another way, but, you know, the United States government, that is the FBI and the Department of Justice were really not effective to stop these groups. It's a story and a half, George. Really filled in, Father Coughlin, as you mentioned, he had 40 million followers, which is a third of America, and he was really anti-Semitic. But, you know, one of the things that really was not even discussed in this movie, right? Jews are very good at learning. They believe in learning. They believe in improving their minds, and they're good at business, and they're successful. And a lot of this has to do with- I think you're taking this to a profile, but I'll let you continue. It's a resentment, right? I mean, not that everybody, because there are poor people. I mean, I know, you know, I know Jewish people, but the thing is the perception is, right? The perception from these groups are- there's a challenge that they're taking over, you know, America. That was the whole idea behind it, you know? And they made great scapegoats. Resentment. They made great scapegoats in the 20th century, probably the 19th century, before enlightenment in Europe. And they were somehow that had infection, infected the United States, and they became the target of this kind of racist scapegoatism. And somehow it helped politicians, officials, and crazies do their thing, and to have to scapegoat people. It is really extraordinary what happened here. And as I said before, we didn't know about it. That the generation that you and I are part of, the generation that grew up in the 40s and 50s and 60s, had no idea. And PS, they don't have any idea now. And that's why the Rachel Maddow, you know, podcasts are important. And it's why the Ken Burns movie is so important, because people have to know about these things. And unfortunately, they don't. So you have, you know, Trump gets up there and does his dog whistle thing on anti-Semitism and other racist dog whistles. And people in this country, you know, by the tens of millions, they buy it. They buy it, and they latch on to this kind of violent extremism about how they should overthrow the government. And these groups like the Jews are somehow dangerous to them, which is all flaming bullshit. And at the same time, people don't realize, even the people who would not engage in that don't realize, as you said, how dangerous it is, how what a fantastic undermining is to democracy and to civilization. Look what happened in Europe. It was two thirds of the Jews of Europe. Six million people were killed. And we had it on page six. And so, you know, could this happen? Everybody walked away from that saying, oh, gee, this is bad. It should never happen again, never again. All these years now, it's, you know, 75 years. And it's never happened again. But you know what? It could happen again. Some ways it is happening again. Exactly. And so these movies have something in common. That is the movies that Ken Burns made in the podcast that Rachel Madder was spending her time on. And it is a concern about it happening again. It's a concern about our people out there don't realize what's going on. Well, they don't want to realize what's going on. And they are fertile ground for a guy like Trump to visit anti-Semitism on this country and also overthrow the country. Where will we be then? What will happen to minority groups, Asians, African Americans, you name it, what will happen to them? You know, all the great principles of the Bill of Rights are at risk. And there are people in this country, including people that you and I know who support him. Knowing that is hard for me to talk about this. Knowing what damage he would wreak upon us and they support him. And that's why Rachel Madder and Ken Burns are doing their work so that we become educated about it. And that's the point of this discussion. That's the point of both of these documentaries. I saw your 30 minutes with Manfred Hennigson, who is a scholar, who's a Holocaust scholar, genocide scholar, Professor Emeritus from UH Manoa. And you got into a lot of these big things. And the reason, you know, coming from my own history, knowing the thing in Turkey about the resentment, you know, that, you know, Turkey for the Turks, I sort of make some comparisons there, you know, from my own perspective, that maybe some others would not. And there was also that Armenian thing, you know, where they killed everybody or sent them to the desert or murdered them like the men were murdered and the women were sent out to the desert to die. So I mean, that, you try to understand what was going on in Europe, what was going on in Hitler's sick mind, right? And it wasn't only Hitler. I mean, he had support. He had support not only in Germany, but when he, and a lot of other other countries, Poland and even Ukraine, you know. So I mean, that's a border of millions of people here. Yes, yes. And you still have that here in America, you know, because as you say, people are supporting Trump knowing some of the things he said. So it really worried, you know, Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, when they closed the gates. That was part of the, you know, white supremacy, northern European kind of thing, right? But knowing that all these millions of people were being killed in Europe, right? And still not thinking up, I mean, there was something where they were going to, someone, some senator brought up sending European Jews to Alaska because it was a territory, right? And they could, and that, and a lot of, a lot of people didn't want that, right? But that at least they would have been saved. And then later, the solution could have been, you know, some would have been made American citizens. Some may have wanted to go back to their homes in Europe after the Nazi threat was gone, but nothing was done. I mean, just. Well, you know, this goes to the whole scenario that Hitler organized. The first thing, and this is also, by the way, covered in this very interesting movie called The Garden of the Finzi Contini. 1970s movie was a redo of a 1950s black and white movie about a family by the name of Finzi Contini who lived in a town called Ferrara near Rome and Mussolini's taking over and he's buddies with Hitler. First thing is they can't ride, they can't have a car. So their car licenses are revoked. Second thing is they can't get on public transportation. They can't get on a streetcar anymore. The third thing is they're riding bicycles now, but they have to give up their bicycles. Now they have to walk. They have to walk with Jewish stars. These are, you know, this family was relatively speaking powerful and wealthy and little by little, actually quick by quick, they were reduced to. Exactly. They were reduced to nobody on their way to Auschwitz. Exactly. And this movie covers it. What kind of a surprise is that in a fairly short order, everything was taken away from them and all the people they knew and destroying their society for no reason. And they thought it was okay. They thought that Mussolini was a clown. They thought that Hitler was a joke, but it hastened. It happened quicker and quicker and quicker. That's one thing. And you know, you talk about the United States offering Alaska or some kind of sanctuary around the country, maybe in rural areas. There wasn't all that much of an opportunity because between the time that he and Mussolini reduced the rights of the Jewish minority and other minorities in Europe, and it wasn't just Germany. It was in every country in which they had power. They did the same thing. Kristallnacht in 1938 was not limited to Germany. It was everywhere that Hitler could do it. And he organized it as kind of a pan-European Kristallnacht. So what happens is now you've got to get out of there. And only a few people could figure out a way to get out of there. They couldn't get visas out and they couldn't get visas in. So they were kind of stuck. And now he does this thing with the final solution because I think he's already set it up so they can't leave. Can't leave. So he forces them to the east. He forces them to Poland. He kills them in Poland using very primitive, brutal methods. And this covered in the documentary. It's not like they can say, look, I like to get out of here. I like to go to the United States. There was no place they could go, even if the United States had taken them. There was no place they could go. So the window of departure got smaller and smaller and smaller. And by the time Hitler was operating his death camps, they couldn't leave. There was no way to get out. And nobody who would take them in, they were locked into this ordinary middle class people, locked into this kind of frack to Auschwitz, which was inescapable for so many, for six million people. What I'm saying is, even if the United States had offered them sanctuary, not clear that there was any moment in the continuum where they could have come in large numbers. But when they could come in small numbers, guys like Breckenridge Long, who was a real name in the State Department, did everything he could to stop their visa application, not let them come into this country. This guy was really totally anti-Semitic. And he was not alone in the State Department. There were others too. And FDR was afraid to face him down. He was afraid to cross the anti-Semites in his own government. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, this documentary brings all of that into perspective of how our own government turned their face away. And they were anti-Semites, very strong anti-Semites in our government. You know, Hogan's Heroes makes a big joke about this whole Nazi, you know, that's what we grew up with, Hogan's Heroes, ha, ha, ha. But there's nothing funny about this whole thing. It's a very sad, sad situation. And I worry about today, you know, that there's a whole movement of, as Rachel Meadow was talking about the 40s, that kind of thing went on in January 6th. What was that all about? You know, storming the U.S. Capitol, right? I mean, our country is based on a system of law, right? And when you get rid of that, you have chaos. And where is the chaos going to lead to? Violence. Violence. And, you know, my dad went, he was memming in Germany in 1923. He was, they sent him to school there. Why? I don't know. I have some issues with Germany in World War I as well. They sent him there. And in 23, his mother had come and his sister had come. And they were living in Memmingen in Germany near his school. And Hitler had come to the square and he was talking, that was the same year they had, he had that beer bust kind of thing, you know, he tried to take over. And my grandmother and father and aunt, they decided this was scary. They weren't Jewish. And, you know, on that side, you know, but they just, they knew something was up. So they tried, they got up and they moved to France, right? So even then in 23, Hitler was spewing this crap in 23, right? And it took him 10 years before I think 33 when he finally got into power. But if we look at our own country, right, of what's going on, but Marjorie Green, whatever her name is, she's nuts, you know. I mean, we've got these people who are Congress people, right, who are spewing this shit now, right? So, so, I mean, you get politically active because, I mean, there is some business people, Republicans, you know, that, that in former days were moderated, you know, you can think a bunch of people, you know, Clairborn Pell, Jake Javits. But what's happened and what's happened now with this Trumpism, and there's a whole, this whole undercurrent of what's going on, this is very, very worrisome. But so that's why this Ken Burns documentary and racial matter, talking about this stuff, as I said, never learned this stuff in high school in college, I went through all these history courses. I was a history minor in college and in graduate school, my first master's, secondary ed, history minor, world history, American history. We never learned any of this. None of this. I don't think I don't think our teachers knew about it either. For some reason, it just didn't get out. I don't know whether that was anti-Semitic or just a failed, a failed historical analysis of what had happened only a few years earlier. It couldn't be anti-Semitic, Jay, because I don't want to cut you off, but Susan Menzer had gone to Brandeis. They should have taught her that so she could pass that on to her students. She never learned that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, that's okay. So yeah, I think it's, I think this is very relevant now. As Rachel Madder has often said on cable, that there is a relationship between those who conspire to overthrow the government. It wasn't a conspiracy to leave Trump in power so much as it was, it is a conspiracy to overthrow the government. As we have known it, the rule of law, the Constitution, the peaceful transfer of power, all those things, that's the conspiracy. And she often says that with that kind of conspiracy, as it existed in the, I guess the late 20s, the 30s, the late 30s, the 40s, it went with anti-Semitism. It was hand in glove. So you get these guys who want to stand, not satisfied with the government or they're a lot in the government. They want to turn it over. They want to overthrow the government through violence. And in the process, they use anti-Semitism as a way to advance those objects. And she makes the point, she makes the argument very well that there's always been a connection. There's a connection now. I mean, logically there is no way to make that connection, but she makes the connection. Really have to watch the stuff and you have to listen to her podcast. If you want to understand American history and the American condition as we have it now. I mean, I suppose if you looked at this from the 50,000 foot level, George, you would say, this is predictable. Given our history in this country, you know, from 1924 on forward, and maybe more, maybe from the 19th century on forward, you would see it was not only slavery. It was racism and bigotry. It's a main theme in American history. And if you knew that properly, as we should have been thought about it, which we were not thought about it, this would not surprise you what's happening with Trump. I don't care if he has grandchildren who are arguably Jewish. That's not his power base. His power base is dog whistles are calling for violence against minority groups against Asians. You know, the Kung flu, remember that? That's clearly dog whistles calling for violence against Asians. And of course, the African Americans and the Jews. So what you have here is a replay of what was going on in maybe the worst time of our history. And so I think we all have to be conscious of this. We all have to study American history as we have never studied it before. We have to study these events that are now being, you know, explained to us and revealed to us. And we have to look at these documentaries from Ken Burns. Nothing he's done up to this point has been as important as this particular documentary. And for that matter, nothing that Rachel Maddow has done up to this point is as valuable and important and instructive as her ultra podcast. And there will be others. I mean, and good for them for having the candor, having the courage to reveal these things to us, and especially in these dark times, we are in dark times, George. And in two or three weeks, we'll have elections that will probably reveal just how dark these times are. The polls are as scary as it gets. The people who would vote for Trump are as scary as they get. Jay, if you look at this, if you study, it's mostly people with less education that are that are they did documentaries with people in the Adirondacks, people, you know, really living poor in the mountains in the Adirondacks, you know, and not the Adirondacks down in North Carolina and Kentucky. And they were all for Trump, you know, so it's there's a welling in the in the people who are less educated that are following Trump. And that's where Trump is gaining a lot of his support, not college educated, you know, it's just the very wealthy industrialists, you know, and then those who are with less education. And that's what's driving this support, you know, the Marjorie Green types, you know, that's who's supporting them. So so that's why I've always said like Singapore, we've got to educate our people universal education. So people understand the big pitch. Well, that's what both of these documentaries are about. I mean, it's too late to go back into the third grade. It's too late to go back into your years in high school or your early years in social studies in college, American history and college too late for that. But but people do watch movies, they do learn from movies. And that's so regrettably it's so for all those movies with with violence and vengeance and guns galore. But it's also true for what Burns and Rachel Maddow were doing. And so hopefully, some people will catch on to this we'll we'll we'll know about the value here of learning American history. And we'll we'll see that we are at great risk. And there is something they can do in November. We don't have a lot of time left, though, because I think we're we're on a huge decline in terms of our norms and our ethics and our morality in this country. It's really, it's really scary. So, George, in the larger sense, what would you rate these movies? I mean, let's take both of them together. Let's take first, we'll take Ken Burns and the US and the Holocaust series. I've seen I've seen it all. I think you've seen most of it. It's an investment in time. It's you know, each one of these episodes is two hours. Plus, yeah, plus, what would you rate them on a, you know, 10 point scale? 10 plus plus plus plus 10 plus. Excellent. Excellent. Research. Excellent. You know, filming documentary filming. Excellent. Even the people who are communicating, you know, the different scholars, you know, I know Debra and all these others, totally 10, 10, 10 plus plus plus. And you want me to rate racial matter too or you want to wait? Well, let's rate her now. We can talk about her more later. Okay. She's a 10 plus two. These three episodes that I listened to, I never knew any of this. And you know, I'm not, I went to college, urban planning masters, history masters, political science, BA, Stony Brook, you know, which is pretty, you know, never learned any of this. I mean, everything, all three episodes were totally new to me. And I find that very, if it was new to me, it's probably new to most, I'm sure it was new to you too, right? But did you know some of this? No. And I minored, like you, I minored in American history in college. And I thought I had some pretty good teachers. But I'm afraid they were better in the 19th century than they were in the 20th. For some reason, we were blocking out the 20th century. And maybe it's because we were still in trauma because of World War II. You know, we were still trying to digest it, we process it. And it wasn't out there yet. We didn't know really what happened in the 20s, 30s and 40s. We didn't really know the inflection point that Pearl Harbor meant. And, and of course, the American connection with Europe. You know, growing up in Farmingdale with my neighborhood, you know, what happened in my, my parents were living because of the trauma they were just moving on. And a lot of the neighbors, you know, because of World War II, most of our Jewish neighbors, they were also living in a, you know, trying to forget, you know. So maybe that's the reason that a lot of this was not brought up. It was too new. It was too traumatic for the country. But, and, you know, why they didn't talk about all these groups, these neo-Nazi groups in the 30s and 40s is beyond me. Well, I'll tell you a part of it. I think a lot of people, including people in, in the community in which I grew up, didn't want to make that much of it because they were afraid of anti-Semitic reaction. And a lot of them changed their names. They weren't Jewish names anymore. A lot of them wouldn't talk about it because they didn't want to be criticized or subject of, of continuing anti-Semitism. And it was only, you know, later on that, that they became freer. They felt more secure. But I want to add one thought before we close, George, and it's this. You know, these, these wars, these genocidal experiences that we suffered in the 20th century, they were really something. But the history of all of that is told by the survivors. And that's, you know, that's the lesson of all of the 20th century, the history is told by the survivors. Those six million people, they can't tell you what happened. They can't tell you what it was like to, to take that train for three days at a time into a camp that was a lie in the sense that work makes you free. Remember the German slogan over the gate? They can't tell you what it was like watching people. They can't tell you it was like going into the, those quote showers end quote and seeing, you know, people die around them. They can't tell you about the brutality. They're dead. They could never tell you anything. Um, and we don't hear from them. We only hear from the historians who are the only ones who have a voice in all of this. And what I thought, and what I do think is historians like Ken Burns and all the people who helped him work on that movie, they are speaking for the dead. They are trying hard to see it through the eyes of the dead. And maybe for me, that's one of the most refreshing things about this. I get a new point of view. These are not the survivors speaking. These are the people who were murdered speaking. Same thing with Rachel Matta. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so profound for me. Well, thank you, George. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss it with you. I hope everybody who hears about this Ken Burns series and Rachel Matta's podcast and invests a little time into learning what happened and understands better about our world in the 20th century and right now. Thank you, George. Couldn't be at a better time right before voting yet. Okay, Aloha. Stay peaceful. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.